


Irregular triangle

by Mother_North



Series: Heartache [5]
Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Angst and Feels, Complicated Relationships, Drama & Romance, Emotional, Heartbreak, Inner reflections, M/M, One-Sided Attraction, Post-Break Up, Psychology, Unresolved Sexual Tension, some fluff towards the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-03 16:23:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17287448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mother_North/pseuds/Mother_North
Summary: Brian reflects on his two pupils and his own feelings under a Christmas tree.





	Irregular triangle

**Author's Note:**

> RPF disclaimer: this is a work of fiction and it is not meant to offend anyone. It is a product of author’s imagination only. All thoughts, actions and emotions described below have nothing to do with reality.

*

Brian takes a deep breath, making himself comfortable in an armchair. A checkered plaid and some mulled wine, white gloom outside the window, when it seems that the whole world stopped turning and time froze in stillness, albeit the tick of the clock on the wall dispels this illusion. There are blue and red garland lamp-lights blinking merrily at the Christmas tree, their illuminated shadows dancing across the room. Winter holidays is often a time for summing up, for making conclusions, for having a look at one’s past. Brian furrows his brow, thinking that he’d better chase away the feeling of unbidden sadness gnawing at his insides; he needs to look into the future in store for him or simply try to live the present to its fullest. But he realizes that he has been looking back to the times passed quite often recently. There is too much bubbling inside, seeking a way out, not wanting to let go.

So many incredible things have happened over the last year, things to cherish for a lifetime: when it seemed to him that he had wings grown behind his back from sheer happiness he felt while witnessing a triumph of two of his most prominent pupils, standing at the top of the world at their side. Back then it seemed to Brian that an overwhelming feeling of euphoria is practically a permanent one — those weeks in PyeongChang being the happiest in his life, in spite of extreme nervousness and unbearable doubts which were torturing him at a certain point when he was sure that an _absolute victory_ was something unreachable. He thought _the both_ wouldn’t be able to finish at a podium and that his happiness would be spoiled by a loss of _at least one_ of the two of them. Still, everything passes with time and after sweet intoxication there comes inevitable hangover. Why  was he feeling so down right now, at the Christmas eve..?

Brian takes a sip of his spicy beverage before diving into troubled waters of heart-searching with masochistic meticulousness.

_A fucking favorite way of pastime, isn’t it?_

Wasn’t he once young and stubborn and wild (in the best sense of the word) — whole life still lying ahead and world at his feet; he could lose himself without remorse, ignoring dangers while high on a sense of his own almightiness…He loved in the same reckless way back then, at least he was capable of it. Tempests of youth give way to calmness of maturity, when reason raises the threshold of one’s sensitivity and if a sparkle does ignite its burning is not as bright as it used to be once and each moment is plagued by a realization that it is doomed to die down soon.

Maybe there are some exceptions but they remain a rarity. Brian thinks that perhaps he is very hard on himself and on others, oftentimes wanting too much from those around and of his own self. It looks like he has overestimated his abilities when it comes to rationalization and analysis — not everything can be catalogued and shelved in perfect order, especially when it comes to feelings. It is hard to confess to yourself that you are at a loss, that you are confused and have let the unfathomable _to actually happen_ , getting into a mess, like a raw youth would in next to no time. He didn’t notice his two pupils falling for each other right before his very eyes. How could he possibly be _that blind_? They were like children to him and he was feeling like a father who has let them down, not interfering before it was too late. He knew they would get burned and still let them get close enough to cause a wildfire. The perfectly tuned through all these years mechanism was now broken and not working properly. To make matters worse, it was _he_ who also got burned.

Brian shivered involuntarily in his armchair, his lips — a tight, thin line. The mulled wine got cold and the taste seemed sour on his tongue, filling him with a sense of revulsion. The half-empty glass clinked pitifully when he had put it on the nearby table forcefully.

 _What was the starting point for all of this?_ Should he rewind the memory reel, dissect each moment (a vivid snapshot in his mind), providing testimony to his own short-sightedness? He knew for quite some time already that there had been something special _between_ _the two_ , but when was the exact moment this low-key tension became fatal attraction? Who of the two of them struck a match first?

Javi’s dark gaze lingering at Yuzuru, his hands finding way to his wasp waist, practically seeking any form of a tactile contact, even if a fleeting one. It never has occurred to Brian that Javier’s interest can be other than solely platonic, for he was “ _the straightest of the straightest_ ”, so to speak. Yuzuru avoided looking at Javier, hiding his eyes, blushing and trying to escape from those two strong arms circling his delicate frame. He seemed as innocent as a _lamb of god_. Brian wasn’t aware of the simple fact that a masterfully feigned innocence was often the best tactics of seduction — resistance out of question.

Brian remembered the _day of epiphany_ , as if it was just yesterday: overwhelming heat of an August noon, when air temperature of a paradoxically hot (for Toronto) summer went off scale. The training session didn’t go too smoothly: Javier looked unnerved, his concentration levels left to be desired while quiet determination laced each of Yuzuru’s movements and he was as a tight bowstring ready to snap any moment, dark embers at the bottom of his intense eyes.

One could cut the tension with a knife and the flames of rivalry were raging high.

Brian sighs exasperatingly; he should have done something back then, instead of booming: “It seems like it’s enough for today! Two of you, get to the locker-room! Now!”

Brian couldn’t recall what exactly made him follow them but the picture he saw in front of his rounded eyes wasn’t something easy to forget.

They were clinging to one another desperately, bodies entwined — lips on lips with a bruising force, as if there were no tomorrow — _his Javier and his Yuzuru, his Yuzuru and his Javier_. Only those who have given up all hope for salvation kiss with such ferocious abandon, only those who are doomed, irreversibly lost in each other.

_The two madmen._

The eruption has begun and molten lava was slowly spreading, covering grounds, reducing everything to ashes on its way downhill.

Brian miraculously didn’t make a sound, silently closing the door to the locker-room. He wiped sweat off his forehead with the back of his trembling hand and then was loitering in the corridor, near a coin-operated coffee machine, making sure no one would enter the locker-room, making sure so that no one else would _see_.

True madness.

He was searching for words frantically, wanting to do _the right thing_ , to say something worthy of a truly good coach: a proper heart-to-heart talk? Or a reproachful ramble with fatherly concerned voice?  Or just to seize these two fools by the scrubwoman of the neck and shake with all his might? Instead, he felt wounded, _devastated_ even. Deep down his own response frightened him, his reaction overwhelming and confusing, as if he was stabbed in the back treacherously. He felt like a wretched fool, his head spinning from strong emotion.

When he saw Yuzuru leaving the locker-room some twenty minutes later (a triumphant smirk at his visibly swollen, bitten lips, his skin glistening with an unmistakable sheen of an after-glow) Brian could hardly fight an overpowering urge to storm into the room and hit Javier hard in the face.

He dragged himself to his office room, walking off in a stiff rickety merengue. He took his head in his hands, a cruel realization dawning upon him, his forbidden lust brought to daylight — ugly and glaring; a free fall, which he wasn’t able to stop.

To fall so deeply for his own student, who among all other things is having an affair with the other pupil of his…Can it get any crazier..?

…An absurdity, a wicked joke of fate; an irregular triangle, drawn by a hand of a madman, where he and Javier are its sides and Yuzuru is its unreachable vertex.

Brian tried to forget, tried looking at them with the same eyes, as if nothing has changed but it seemed like an impossible task. He kept on repeating to himself that he has to talk to the two lovers, has to warn them about the dangers of sudden disclosure, about its possible bad influence on the training process, about the blow it might cause to their reputations and careers of competitive skaters. But how could he start such a talk being a heartsick lover himself? It would have been despicable and unworthy in the light of his own feelings toward Yuzuru: as if he was seeking a way to get rid of a rival in the face of Javier, using his authority of a coach to throw his weight about. He would have never forgiven himself. It seemed there was no way out of the dilemma and Brian chose to wait — sink or swim!

Brian was suffering wordlessly, keeping _their_ secret safe. Oftentimes he was lying wide awake at night, sorting the images from the previous day in his mind: each gesture and glance of theirs, while shamefully searching for a tiny _crack_. He despised his weakness but he couldn’t help himself.

It couldn’t last forever and it all came to its logical end at PyeongChang. Javier has made a decision to end his competitive career and return back to Spain. Moreover, he seemingly found a girlfriend and updated his “Instagram” regularly with a string of lovey-dovey pics and declarations of love. Brian didn’t have a clue why Yuzuru had let Javier go, why he hadn’t struggled for him enough, at which moment of time they  had gone past the point of no return in their relationship.

_The volcano eruption died down and the lava fossilized._

 Yuzuru was always quite an egoist, wanting it all and hating to share. He wanted Javier without a remnant, fully at his disposal and he yet again got what he desired. And then everything faded away like a feverish dream with Javier wanting to run away as far as possible and as soon as he could (escaping from himself, above all things). Brian was watching the unfolding drama with a cautious eye, while constantly staying at the periphery at a safe distance. He felt he didn’t have the right to interfere, now that there were seeds of shameful hope growing in his enamored heart.

_The damned triangle had been seriously deformed and was about to tumble down any given moment._

Yuzuru has given his all to the ice again, skating with a newly-found obsessed vigor. Although he took rehabilitation very seriously he still continued talking about the quad axel, obscure gleam in his intense eyes often making a shiver run down Brian’s spine. Brian wanted to hug him when Yuzuru suddenly froze in the center of the ice-rink with his dazed eyes fixed on the striped yellow-red flag, hanging on the wall. He realized there was no use because he would never be able to fill the void in the younger man’s chest, no matter how hard he tried. Perhaps, one day he would ask what exactly had happened between the two of them: was it Yuzuru to distance himself from Javier for some unknown reason or was it Javier who got tired of being eclipsed by the glow of this impossibly scorching thermonuclear star, which _devoured_ objects that happened to appear at its orbit…Brian has already found out the destructive force of its blazing heat firsthand.

His mobile phone vibrated quietly, disrupting his vicious cycle of inner reflections. His dear “Spanish Don Quixote” was beaming at him from the screen. Brian wasn’t expecting to be so happy to hear Javier’s voice once again. They outlined their plans concerning the Spaniard’s participation in the upcoming European Championships in late January and discussed the exact date of Javier’s arrival to Toronto. They exchanged season’s greetings, wishing each other all of the best and Brian was already going to hang up when he heard Javier suddenly asking, his voice obviously strained:

“How is _he_?”   

“Fighting as always…You know how he’s like.”

“Does he really miss me or you just said it out of the blue, as a charitable act of shameless _fan servicing_?”

Brian huffed good-humoredly.

“Why don’t you ask him about it yourself? Have you lost his phone number or something?”

A drawn out pause and an audible sigh.

“You know perfectly well that he has changed it and he hasn’t given the new one to me…He didn’t bother to or maybe just didn’t want me having it… _Do you understand?”_

Brian gulped nervously.       

“Listen, Javi…I’ve been wanting to ask you for quite some time already… I don’t want to poke my nose into your private stuff but…

“Please don’t, Brian! _Just_ _don’t_! I don’t want to talk about it right now, what is in the past should remain there. _I am happy_ , you know… She is a nice girl and she seems right for me…It is as if you were drowning, hitting the very bottom and then…Then you see sunlight again through all of the water, streaming from above and you want to fight again, want to reach the surface… I am free and I am breathing and living easily. Some things cannot be explained and are better left as such — strange and mysterious…It was like a momentarily blindness, like a lightning-bolt driven full in your face… _I loved him_ …Fuck. Sorry, I don’t want to spoil your holidays with my senseless rambling…Just tell him that I _really, really_ want him to be happy too…”

Javi continues mumbling best wishes, mixing them with pointless apologies and Brian hardly has doubts that he is pretty wasted. He wants to pour something strong for himself too and after finally ending this leading-to-nowhere conversation, he does just that. Whiskey burns his throat, spreading pleasant numbness through his body. Mortal fatigue makes his eye-lids close sleepily, and he wraps the woolen plaid around his body, readjusting it to keep the dissipating warmth. His limbs are leaden and soon he drifts into an uneasy sleep. Garland lights are illuminating his sleeping face, their constantly shifting colors flickering over his skin.  

Brian is woken up abruptly in the dead of night. Someone is knocking at his door and he casts a glance at the wall clock disbelievingly to check the time.

_It is two o’clock in the morning._

_Fucking hell._

He has no idea who it could possibly be at his door and his sleepiness evaporates in the blink of an eye.

Brian looks into a door viewer and there is a small, fragile-looking figure standing at his threshold — there is an enormous red knitted scarf wrapped around its upper half of the body.

_Yuzuru._

His usually pale cheeks are flushed from cold and he isn’t wearing a hat, Brian starting to lection him about it the moment the young man comes inside his house. Brian is all raw nerves and concern, staring at Yuzuru wide-eyed as if he were an apparition and not a living human made of flesh.

“What does all of this mean, Yuzu? Does Yumi-san know you are here?”

“Yes, _okaasan_ knows.”

Brian grabs Yuzuru’s freezing hands into his warm palms, squeezing tightly. He takes off his black parka, makes him sit into his armchair, covering the boy with the checkered plaid. He keeps on muttering under his breath not able to stop for a minute, battling his own uncalled for anxiousness in such a way. Yuzuru is dressed in a knitted white sweater from Ghana chocolate commercial and Brian is all of a sudden _very aware_ of his youthful, enticing beauty. Brian’s breath catches in his throat and he imagines what it would be like to run his fingers through his silky black hair, yet he is too _mortified_ to make a move; he thinks of touching his smooth rosy cheeks, caressing the tender skin but he doesn’t move an inch — _paralyzed_ _with_ _fear_. 

Yuzuru is eyeing him as if he was an opened book to read, Brian’s heart and soul on display for the young man to see all of his desires and doubts. Yuzuru is looking at Brian as if he knows everything, as if he has already _forgiven_ and it makes the older man shudder.

Brian takes a gulp of strong whiskey and his eyes start to burn. Yuzuru doesn’t say a word, closing the distance between them, his thin arms hugging Brian’s sturdy torso. He buries his face at the crook of Brian’s neck, pressing into the man — there is no sensuality in this gesture but only a desperate desire _to find_ _true warmth_.    

Brian is embracing him in return, inhaling unique aroma of his hair. He is so close right now, yet so far at the same time. Brian can sense Yuzuru’s heartbeat against his own ribcage and the way his breath is tickling the skin of his neck when the young man finally speaks:

“ _He_ has _her_ …and what about me? _Who is there for me?”_

Brian shivers from raw pain in his muffled voice. He is at a loss, overwhelmed by such frankness. What can he answer? He knows too little; it is an equation with too many variables...

_“I am.”_

Brian is whispering that he’ll be at his side if only Yuzuru lets him; that he is ready to take care of him as a coach, as an elder brother, as a fatherly figure, as a friend and as a mentor… He is aware Yuzuru can see his _real feelings_ , a confession of a totally different nature to be read in his eyes and in the tone of his voice. There is an opportunity to take a look into the precipice inside his soul, for he wants so much more, _far more_ from Yuzuru _._

His speech is cut short by an elegant finger put to his quivering dry lips.

Yuzuru’s stare is _killing him softly_ and Brian feels the young man’s full lips tentatively touch his eyelids and then his temples in a series of chaste kisses, which are almost a _benediction_ ; a way of expressing gratitude and apologizing for lack of reciprocation of Brian’s disclosed feelings.

Both of them are silent for a long time and Brian wants this majestic moment to linger.

“Merry Chritmas, Brian-sensei.”

There’s a sense of deliverance inside and though Brian is aware that the pain of refusal is yet to return, he can’t remember when he felt happier. He is covering Yuzuru’s neck, chin and bridge of nose with kisses; doesn’t register the moment tears began streaming down his own face — pure and heartfelt and liberating.

Miracles do happen and sometimes healing comes in a form of a stab — a single cut severing any surplus, the wound cicatrizing with time.

And Brian is ready to enshrine this precious scar.

In all of the love there is.

 

*


End file.
